


Necromancy for the Soul

by MissCeliaKnight



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 16:17:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16021502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissCeliaKnight/pseuds/MissCeliaKnight
Summary: Being possessed put things into perspective for Noah, as unfortunate as that was for him. But given his world felt like it was turned upside down, it was for the best.





	Necromancy for the Soul

The possession was what scared him. For a thing without a body to be inhabited, for the soul itself to be manipulated, terrified Noah. He had always assumed it was which soul was in possession of the body, but perhaps it was more melting together, assimilating the soul into something more powerful than itself the way some wavelengths of color spread farther than others.

Noah was ultraviolet. The thing that had taken him was deep infrared in a way that was like drowning in an ocean of blood, an acidic taste like cheap wine. It was necromancy for the soul, to play in his essence like a rockpool and manipulate the flow of seaweed in a way that forced everything to crawl out of him. To skitter out from every orifice like black insects with too many legs enmass, to leave him, to rush away into the ether.

To Noah, this reminded him of dying. It reminded him of losing focus and his body trying to desperately vie for his soul to return to it’s hollow shell casing. It reminded Noah of how badly he wanted to live.

The sponge like hollows in his bones whistled like flutes. His eye socks pounded from the compact dirt behind them, blacking out his vision. He felt empty, as if everything inside of him had melted into mucus and had been scooped out in sticky waves of the ocean of time. He could feel the insects that worked their way into his stomach like butterflies he got around his friends, but these crawled, gnawed, removed, repurposed.

Noah didn’t want to be repurposed, he wanted to be Noah.

Dying wasn’t something you could describe to a living thing. Living things fell asleep, living things could cling to each other. The dead only leeched, the dead only had lapses in memory.

One moment he was feeling his body work around like an electric circuit at the thought of kissing Blue, the next he was familiarizing himself with an echo of his death, then he was in the back of the Pig, snatching up Ronan’s horrid mixtape. Time looped around in circles, twisted back in on itself, making Noah dizzy.

He didn’t know _when_ things happened, just that they did at some point. It was somehow easier to live in the moment when you were dead. The moment of held breaths from secrets and realizations. It was snippets of conversations as he tried to collect himself, tried to pull the zipper up, tighten the string to seal himself back up in all of his proper places. Noah listened because he was scared of drowning in the flow of time, scared of ruining something with words that weren’t meant for now.

He understood why people were scared of watery graves.

He was always in a subtle state of distress at the rate that moss grew, not knowing if his deterioration was from his corpse falling to pieces; if it was from how long his spirit was left exposed to the elements of the veil; if it was leyline magic failing him; Noah was failing, everything was shattering, glass and glitter.

Noah wasn’t quite sure how often he screamed. It was a soundless thing, like watching glass fall. It was anticipated to hurt someone, but Noah always turned around before his feelings hit the floor. He wasn’t supposed to be this way. He didn’t know what he was supposed to be, he didn’t remember what he was. He just knew screaming on occasion was a relief.

But everything hurt. Noah cut himself on his own glass. He was exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. He needed something in a way that he could only experience if he was alive.

How long could he continue to exist in a time he wasn’t meant for? How long could he let himself stay in a future that wasn’t meant for him? People expected the future to be flying cars, clean air, platinum. Noah had expected the future to be an overgrowth in his chest of life, of stifling options, of following those he loved because it was easier than leading and hurting people with the wrong choice.

Noah couldn’t bear hurting people, so since he never did, he didn’t know how to apologize for it. It was easier to hide, it was easier to shut himself away and hope that the memory of the pain he caused vanished, but would leave him intact.

It was easier to believe he’d fallen into a time when they’d already forgiven him.

Noah wasn’t quite sure what he believed in when he was alive and felt the same in death. He believed his friends loved him. He believed they would miss him. He believed he’d never see them again if he left and it wounded him deeply in a way Whelk never could have managed. He just knew he didn’t want to experience the feeling of losing himself into something greater ever again.

Noah couldn’t bear to be possessed by god or seperated like fireflies of essence into everything around him the way people theorized. Noah wanted to be Noah, but more than that, he wanted his friends to know he loved them. He wanted to divert the course of time to ensure they were all together, all happy.

Noah knew if he lived, Gansey would die. His friends wouldn’t be his friends, they wouldn’t be together like the way bushels of fruit clung together, fresh and sweet and relieving. Noah knew for him to have what he currently wanted, he needed to die in the first place. He thought on it as if he had a choice in the matter.

Noah knew himself and his relationship with his friends were a paradox.

Noah knew he was only supposed to be this fleeting thing, the catch of something out of the corner of your eye, a smell from your childhood you couldn’t place. Noah knew he wasn’t supposed to be as solid, as heavy, as weighted as the living, but he clung anyway. He clung to Ronan’s tall form, to Gansey’s broad shoulders, to Blue’s small hands, to Adam’s willow like features.

But he couldn’t hold onto them anymore, couldn’t reach them. It took too much energy, too much life. He could feel it, the way his leeching seeped into their bodies like dried sweat, the way it enraged him. He could feel the tug that would be required, the possession. He could feel the way it would scoop into them and pull something out that was important if he wanted to settle into them like old bird houses.

Noah loved them. He couldn’t do that to them. Maybe he’d truly die when everyone who knew of him finally died. But for now, he lingered, formless, a distant sound from another time, watching, unable to reach out to them, but happy they were happy.

Happy they missed him. If he’d lived, he’d have never met them. He loved his family, but the way they mourned wasn’t the way his friends did. His family mourned and slowly removed all signs of him from the house except for photos. His friends collected more and more mementos, opened their lives to things he’d enjoyed and kept them simply because Noah would have wanted them.

Sometimes, when he could muster up enough energy, he’d play in the frost of their uncleaned cars in winter, his own personal snow globe.

 _Remembered_.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr version:  
> http://missceliaknight.tumblr.com/post/178189691506/


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